27

A dull redness suffused the smoke and outlined the packed shapes of darkly dressed men hunched tightly together in the narrow spaces between the tables. The long, broad trough of the room was like a huge stained window, one that had crashed intact from a high wall. As one of the components of this sombre mosaic, Leonard stared up at the white pool of light over the stage where Blakeley, in his costume of genial imbecility, tapped his cigarette into the top of his pouched trousers and sang a song which, over the murmur of conversation and laughter, could scarcely be heard. His toothless mouth was held open as if sucking in the air of his audience’s amusement. As he interrupted his song to recite a joke, they laughed, a dolorous, hard sound like the crushing of stone; then they watched, moodily reflective, their eyes turned dangerously onto his slight figure. He beat his fists against his thighs, stooping towards them. Their laughter withdrew, then surged forward, an impatient, temperamental tide. Waiters pushed between the groups of men, trays poised on their raised arms. Across the room Leonard saw Alex.

His uncle’s bronzed face was turned up to the stage with a questioning eagerness, absorbed in the grotesque figure and the smouldering laughter around him. He talked animatedly to the men crouched at his table and they laughed, diffidently, relaxed. One of them banged his back. Then, from a quick look in his direction, Leonard realised that he too had been observed. The men at Alex’s table drew back, turning towards the white figure on the stage. The lights were intensified to a crescendo of music as Blakeley stood there singing.

Some laughed still; it seemed, despite that pleading voice, he had been consumed, dissolved by the light. Others stared blindly into the brightness, trying to discover some focus within it. The club had a reputation for its lighting displays; innumerable effects were obtained from expensive batteries of lamps which normally would have been sufficient to illuminate a stage several times its area. Gentler lights now sprang down like sprays and the dazzling concentration was broken, then turned off. In the sudden darkness of the stage a slight figure could be seen stumbling, slightly dazed, towards a door at the rear. Above it, a faint red neon sign outlined the word, ‘Artists’. The hall was lit up.

‘So you’re not above coming here,’ Alex said after struggling across the room. He seemed pleased to have discovered Leonard in such surroundings, and alone. ‘It’s the second night I’ve been here. I’ve really enjoyed myself. There’s nothing quite like this, Leonard, where I come from.’ He watched his nephew acutely. ‘That last performer they’ve had both nights I’ve been here. He seems rather strange, though. What do you think?’

Leonard scarcely glanced at his uncle. After a short silence he said, ‘When are you going back down south?’

‘I’ve still a few more days leave yet.’

‘From making cars?’

‘I intend to see your father first, Leonard. Before I go back.’ His nephew was suddenly thrust forward as several men pushed between the tables.

‘I was hoping to see you at Isabel’s,’ Alex went on. ‘But apart from that Provost, I was the only male guest there, so I found some excuse to come away. He’s a fool. The Provost, I mean.’

He looked at Leonard as though expecting some sort of affirmation, but Leonard continued to gaze uninterestedly at his uncle, almost bored. Men’s voices suddenly roared, and a large group began to press in through the double doors at the end of the room opposite the stage. Red canvas curtaining shielded the five windows down one side.

‘Have they heard any more about the old man, yesterday?’ Alex said, and when Leonard shook his head with the same aloofness he added, ‘You know, I haven’t been above catching certain references these last two days about me and … what shall we say? The manufacture of cars. As though, through working in industry, I’m somehow not as complete a person as those who don’t. Or at least, as those who don’t have to.’

Over Leonard’s shoulder he suddenly caught sight of the man who, the day before, he had expelled from the grounds of the Place. Tolson was staring at them with a moody, vaguely threatening expression, and seemed unconcerned whether he had been observed or not. Alex glanced at Leonard but he appeared completely unaware that they were being overlooked.

‘What references do you mean?’ Leonard said, staring down at the plastic surface of the table.

‘Oh, your father’s for one.’

‘He probably resents your success, and ascribes it no doubt to a lack of any real conscience or feeling.’

‘Why should he do that? He’s scarcely in a position to criticise anyone, let alone someone who …’

‘It’s the nature of your work that antagonises him. At least, we must assume that it is. After all, cars aren’t much for a man to have as the end of his life. And he’s very much like that, I’m afraid, always looking for some justifiable end.’

For a while Alex watched his nephew in silence. Then he gazed almost abstractedly across the room at Tolson.

‘I’m not very good at arguing. Finding reasons for what I do,’ he said. ‘Though I am – although I say it myself – a good negotiator. But coming here, to a place like this, it means something to me. These men. This is something I can understand. And looking at it another way …’ He continued to stare beyond Leonard’s shoulder. ‘You can’t change men’s nature, only the context it has to work in. It’s that that makes for better things. The context of a man’s life, rather than the man himself. The man himself, that’s something different.’

‘Oh, I agree with that,’ Leonard said amicably.

‘And the manufacture of cars, or of any consumer goods for that matter. I realise perfectly well that they’re only a commodity, a means to an end. But simply looking at it as crudely as you can, without the manufacture and the export of cars this country would go to the dogs.’

‘Yes, I understand that,’ Leonard said with increasing friendliness, even beginning to smile. ‘You see, I’m only trying to suggest something of the way in which my father feels.’

Alex clenched his hands and pushed them onto the edge of the table. ‘I’m not so sure how to describe it,’ he said, ‘but I’ll admit that by isolating himself, even though I don’t understand the reasons, your father’s found for himself some sort of authority. Or power, if you like. I mean, you tend to listen more to what he says than you would to somebody who lived a more ordinary life. But the fact is, it’s made him a bit potty as well. All of you. And I don’t mind. No, I mean that. People tend to be too much like one another these days. But your father even thinks, for example, that Austen organised yesterday’s affair just in order to humiliate him.’

‘But didn’t he?’

‘No … no. Certainly not as far as I’m aware. I don’t think Austen could do that sort of thing, anyway.’

‘Don’t you? You don’t know Austen. What a merciless and frustrated ambition for power he’s got. I mean, did you know that he still believes in the divine right of kings? If you mention it to him he’ll laugh, of course. But inside him, he believes it. And something as absurd as that. He’s a fantasist of the strangest sort.’

Alex looked at Leonard seriously a moment. Then slowly he began to smile. He glanced quickly across the room, then said, ‘No, the only power I understand is the power of men like this who, whatever their strengths and weaknesses, work and live together for their common good. Because they know that’s the way they can survive, all or nothing. That’s power. When you can share it in the bottom of a mug of ale after a day’s work.’

‘You mean the only way for them to survive,’ Leonard said with the same friendliness of tone – one so unnatural, it seemed, that Alex began to look at him with sudden suspicion. ‘But what of those who won’t.… No, let’s just say, those who can’t reduce themselves to the lowest common denominator? What’s to become of them? And in any case, this isn’t only power you’re talking about. It’s force.’

‘Force? What force?’ Alex said, and with a certain preparatory movement, for Tolson had risen from his seat and, despite the thick crowd separating them, was clearly intending to come over.

‘Do you remember the York Room at the Place where we had the meal?’ Leonard said with the same friendly tone. ‘And the carved figure over the fireplace? Do you know what the figure is? Imagine this as the room. There’s the double doors. Those are the five windows, and at the end, where the stage is, stands the fireplace, and in the centre that carved figure.…’

Several things, however, happened all at once, distracting Alex from the curious parallel Leonard was tracing. Just as Tolson reached them the lights were suddenly dimmed and from the shadow of the stage, at which Leonard was gazing as though suddenly in a trance, appeared a huge and hideous face.

It was so large and misshapen, and so white, that there was no possibility that it could be human. Each feature was wildly distorted, the nose bulging forward like a corrugated trunk, and the mouth pulled back from twin rows of deformed and giant teeth. Deep crevices grooved the skin like wounds. As the spotlight retreated slightly, it glistened on a black flange of hair, almost metallic in its luminous sheen, and indicated beneath the face, like a narrow and exhausted stalk, the figure of a man. A belated roar of laughter hardly concealed the disturbing effect this apparition had had. One or two women had screamed, and a single voice called out in a kind of bated defiance.

Then, at the humility of the voice that suddenly emerged from this grotesque vision, the men laughed. It was a heavy, stinging crash, dispelling their apprehension.

‘I’ve come. And to prove it, I’m here. You didn’t think I looked like this without my make-up on, did you, love? No. But did you guess? It’s what my wife calls her going-away face. Every time she sees it.… Yes! You’ve got it! That’s right!’

The face, completely motionless and inexpressive, reflected nothing of the feelings which lay behind it. A burnt sound of self-amusement, a metallic laugh, slid from the same swollen lips which, a few moments before, had suggested a melancholic disaffection. It was as if the face were detachedly resigned to its appearance.

‘Now don’t look at me like that, love. Because I’m not as pretty as you it doesn’t mean I haven’t got feelings. I feel, I do.’ Another, more relaxed kind of laughter broke out at this preposterous idea. ‘I feel, I do. I might have an ugly front but I’ve got a lovely behind.’

The men laughed with a certain relief, staring at this absurd intruder with increasing shyness.

‘I mean, to look at me you’d think I was perfectly normal. Yet when I was born my father took one look at me and said.… Ah! What? I’ve heard that one before? Shall I tell you a little secret? You’ve heard everything before. Perhaps because you think I look like this I don’t know. That I haven’t any problems. You ought to see my girl friend. If you think I’m not very attractive, you should see her. Last week she frightened a pig into giving birth to three mutton chops. No, though, it’s not everybody who’s as lucky as me. I mean, don’t you think really that I look just a bit fine? That it’s not quite as bad as it seems? If I thought that, then I might even want to go on living. Do you know? Do you think … if you think it’s just a bit better, just a teeny weeny fraction better than it seems, just the smallest fraction of the smallest part, do you think you could call out, “Yes!”?’

He waited a moment. ‘Come on. Please, ladies and gentlemen. If you just think it’s not quite as bad as it all seems, could you call out, “Yes!” Please!’ He waited again, the mask turning for the first time, giving its features a simulated look of anxiety.

Then several people called out, ‘No!’

There was a burst of laughter, then a louder and more confident shout. ‘No!’

‘Oh, dear. What shall I do? How could you be so cruel? How could you be so wanting in the finer human sentiments?… How would you like to wake up next to this on a morning love? Just your cup of tea? She thinks it’s real, you know. Poor old soul. She’s right. It’s all solid bone under here. Good thick stuff all the way through.’

A slight tone of derision had hardened into a more petulant sarcasm, the mask turning from side to side as the head beneath it grew more animated. ‘I’m not looking my best today. I think that’s the trouble. I had one of my teeth out yesterday, you see. My first milk one. This here at the back.’

A white hand with no apparent attachment to the figure emerged from the darkness and held back the rubber lip to reveal several large and eroded stumps.

‘I’ve suffered. You don’t know how much I’ve suffered with it. You don’t realise. There’ve been times when, literally, I’ve just not known what to do with myself. You don’t understand what it’s like to be like this. But even then, if you think that I don’t look too good you should be up here where I’m standing. You might laugh at me, but my God, was there ever a more pitiable and snotty herd of …’

A table had fallen over, scraping, then crashing with the multiple percussion of breaking glass; like a giant insect, its legs protruded in the air, rocking slightly from some object pinned underneath.

Leonard, turning from a sudden and hysterical recognition of Tolson, had bent forward to retch over the white underside of the plastic table, one hand clinging to an upturned, metal leg, the other still clutching his raincoat. For a moment he seemed completely helpless, swaying with the table, then he swung round almost in a complete circle. He seemed to see and to move towards the door in the same instant, a simultaneous impulse which gave those watching the impression that he was being ejected from the room by some invisible force. And as he hurried towards the end of the hall a larger figure detached itself violently from the surrounding crowd and followed him out.

The men stood in darkness. The light on the stage had dimmed, and for a moment there was no illumination at all. Then simultaneously several lights sprang on, and in such profusion that the men shielded their eyes, calling out, blinded.

It was some time before the correct combination reduced the brilliance, and it was only then that Alex, standing quite close to the upturned table, was actually aware for the first time of Leonard’s absence. Tolson was also nowhere to be seen. As Alex hurriedly peered round the room he had a distinct impression of his brother, Austen, standing to one side of the door; then the confusion and the crowd masked everything. All around him men were looking at one another with an unaccustomed dumbness as though waiting for an event to begin.